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A few days later, during the screening, Canseco became “irate” and “unruly,” according to a police report.

In both cases, he relented, allowing the agents to complete their job of ensuring the safety of commercial air travelers.

In Sunday's story, Martin wonders whether the congressman's confrontations actually were calculated ploys to recapture the hearts of tea party voters who cannon-blasted him to office in 2010.

Canseco denies any posturing.

Consider, however, his votes last year, when a paralyzed Congress faltered and nearly failed in negotiations to continue funding the federal government.

Infuriated with Washington's fiscal policies, tea party voters had elected a wave of freshmen, including Canseco, to slash the nation's deficit.

Faced with trillions of dollars in debt, this new class of lawmaker has refused to balance spending cuts with any tax increases, insisting on draconian reductions.

Incidentally, such cuts would wreak havoc on air-traffic control, but that's not why Quico at the airport mirrors Quico in the House.

The congruence: Canseco brims with tea party indignation, but only when there are no real consequences.

Consider three votes.

In the first, Congress was struggling to enact a continuing resolution to fund the rest of the fiscal year, and failure would have carried the very real consequence of a government shutdown.

A reason for the struggle: House Republicans wanted $100 billion in cuts. One hour before the midnight deadline, the president and congressional leaders agreed to $38 billion in cuts.

Canseco voted to support the measure, bucking the votes of 59 hard-line Republicans who would have preferred that the government grind to a halt.

The nation reached its debt ceiling a few weeks later, meaning Congress had to raise the limit to keep paying the bills on things it had already bought.

Again, the refusal of Republicans to consider tax increases scuttled negotiations. House Speaker John Boehner pushed a bill with draconian cuts, called “Cut, Cap and Balance,” that had zero hope of passing the Senate or the president's desk.

Canseco found this a convenient time to appease the tea party with a dose of indignation.

As one of only nine House Republicans who voted against the austere measure, he fretted in a press release that it was “tied to an increase in our debt.”

Yet when the nation actually arrived at the brink of default weeks later, positioning the economy for a nosedive, Canseco voted for a last-ditch deal struck by Obama and congressional leaders.

This angered local tea partiers, who considered drafting someone in the district who might actually sacrifice the economy for political points.